Hyperledger Grid

According to a press release on the 25th of January 2018, the US based agricultural conglomerate, Cargill will be investing its digital engineering resources into the development of Hyperledger Grid. The grid is one of the most recent projects by Hyperledger that is geared towards streamlining the agricultural supply chain using Hyperledger’s blockchain technology.

SAN FRANCISCO (January 30, 2019) – Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies, begins 2019 by announcing it has added eight new members to the consortium. In addition, Hyperledger has delivered some key technology updates and now has a total of 12 projects.

Hyperledger is a multi-venture, multi-stakeholder effort that includes various enterprise blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. Recent project updates include the release of Fabric v1.4 LTS, the first long term support version of the framework, as well as the addition of two new projects Hyperledger Ursa and Hyperledger Grid. Grid uses shared, reusable tools to accelerate the development of ledger-based solutions for cross-industry supply chain applications. Additionally, a detailed case study on Circulor’s Hyperledger Fabric-based production system for tracing tantalum mining in Rwanda adds to growing list of resources for guiding enterprise blockchain adoption.

“We wrapped up 2018 with a successful and exciting Hyperledger Global Forum,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “This first worldwide meeting of the Hyperledger community underscored the growing pace of development and deployment of blockchain in general and our tools and technologies in particular. We are seeing more signs of this accelerating pace of maturation and adoption here in early 2019. We welcome these newest members and look forward to their help in driving this growth.”

Hyperledger allows organizations to create solid, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by offering enterprise-grade, open source distributed ledger frameworks and code bases. The latest general members to join the community are BTS Digital LLP, Exactpro Systems Limited, Jitsuin, Lares Blockchain, Myndshft, Omnigate, Poste Italiane and Wrapious Marketing Co Ltd.

“We are an emerging company aiming at creating a national digital ecosystem in Kazakhstan that will facilitate the basic processes of human life and provide equal access to resources,” said Eugene Volkov, Chief Digital Officer, BTS Digital LLP. “As we see accelerated growth of transactions and actors in today’s life, we acknowledge the growing need to build a trustworthy society where all the participants can act with consensus, immutability, equality and transparency. Building such an environment requires trust. Our trust in Hyperledger’s expertise is a primary reason why we choose to become a member. We believe this community will guide us in finding technological solutions in achieving our goals.”

“Being a firm strategically focused on providing the highest level QA services for mission-critical market infrastructures, Exactpro understands the important role of this new technology and strives to enhance our expertise in this area through collaboration with leading blockchain consortia such as Hyperledger,” said Maxim Rudovsky, CTO, Exactpro. “We firmly believe our Hyperledger and The Linux Foundation memberships will provide Exactpro with access to community resources that will help us deliver more profound testing of DLT-based software systems to our clients.”

“One of the founding decisions we made at Jitsuin was to become a Hyperledger member,” said Jon Geater, Chief Technology Officer, Jitsuin. “As part of our mission to unlock the value of data in the Internet of Things, we focus on Industrial IoT device lifecycle assurance where security, price, reliability and shared responsibility are all crucial. Keeping IoT in a known, good state is a team sport and is exactly where distributed ledger technologies work best. I am also delighted to continue serving the Governing Board and Hyperledger community to help ensure it remains the unrivaled home of advanced cross-industry business blockchain technologies.”

“Lares Blockchain Security is delighted to join the Hyperledger community,” said Chris McGarrigle, CEO, Lares Blockchain Security. “Hyperledger’s fundamental strengths of performance, scalability and security resonate with our core values at Lares Blockchain Security. As our blockchain products and technologies continue to gain momentum in the medical, biotech, mining and financial industries, we see our partnership with Hyperledger as critical to further establishing ourselves in the enterprise.”

“Blockchain presents an enormous opportunity for healthcare to simplify and unify claims management, prior authorizations and other administrative functions, helping payers and providers reduce costs and improve timeliness and quality of care,” said Ron Wince, CEO, Myndshft Technologies. “That is why Myndshft is thrilled to join Hyperledger and collaborate with blockchain leaders and innovators across industries to find ways to leverage the technology to increase efficiency of healthcare operations, improve the patient experience and optimize financial performance in the value-based care era.”

“Omnigate Systems is delighted to join Hyperledger and to leverage blockchain technologies to drive interoperability in finance. Omnigate provides enterprise-grade, universal ledger software with extensive integrations. Our mission is to empower businesses of any size to rapidly build production-grade transactional systems for both traditional assets and emerging digital assets,” said Raphael Carrier, CEO, Omnigate. “We consider the integration of the Interledger protocol (via Hyperledger Quilt) into our product to be a key milestone. We believe this is an important initiative which will advance interoperability and accessibility to the ‘Internet of Value.'”

“Blockchain is not just a buzzword or a myth anymore, but is becoming the foundation for establishing a distributed, transparent and cross-industry interoperable ecosystem,” said Mirko Mischiatti, Chief Information Officer, Poste Italiane. “Poste Italiane wants to actively participate in this new and exciting community by becoming a member of Hyperledger in order to continue its path for the innovation and modernization of financial, logistic and insurance industries. We really look forward to working with other members and making our effort to contribute for the enhancement of blockchain technology.”

“It is our honor to become a member of the Hyperledger community,” said Tommy Wong, Chief Operating Officer, Wrapious Marketing Co Ltd. “Joining Hyperledger provides us with more opportunity to explore more within the blockchain space and to contribute to project developments. Our vision is to create a virtual world that provides equal access to everyone regardless of their status or social class in the community. We believe being part of Hyperledger will add to our ability to achieve this vision.”

About Hyperledger

Hyperledger is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger under the foundation. To learn more, visit: https://www.hyperledger.org/.

Today Hyperledger, part of the Linux Foundation announced its latest enterprise blockchain project, Hyperledger Grid. The initiative is a framework that provides a set of tools particularly suited to supply chain blockchains. The main sponsors are agribusiness company Cargill and two of the maintainers of the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain protocol, Intel and Bitwise IO. This is the first project focused on a particular industry.

Supply chain is commonly cited as one of the most promising distributed ledger use-cases. Initiatives focused on building supply chain solutions will benefit from shared, reusable tools. Hyperledger Grid seeks to assemble these shared capabilities in order to accelerate the development of ledger-based solutions for all types of cross-industry supply chain scenarios.

Grid intends to:

Provide reference implementations of supply chain-centric data types, data models, and smart contract based business logic – all anchored on existing, open standards and industry best practices.

Showcase in authentic and practical ways how to combine components from the Hyperledger stack into a single, effective business solution.

What is Grid?

Hyperledger Grid is a framework. It’s not a blockchain and it’s not an application. Grid is an ecosystem of technologies, frameworks, and libraries that work together, letting application developers make the choice as to which components are most appropriate for their industry or market model.

Hyperledger platforms are flexible by design, but, as such, do not speak the language of any business or have opinions on how basic data types should be stored. In reality, enterprise business systems and market models are actually quite mature, as organizations have been transacting electronically based on common standards for decades. Grid will provide a place for implementations of these standards and norms.

The initial linkage between Grid and other elements in the stack will be via Sabre, a WebAssembly (WASM) Smart Contract engine. By adopting this approach, Grid asserts the strategic importance of WASM and provides a clear interface for integration with platforms inside and outside of Hyperledger. It is our hope and expectation that WASM and Sabre become a de facto Hyperledger standard.

What’s Next?

Initially, we plan to anchor much of the domain model work on GS1/GTIN standards, but many other implementations could be contributed and published, including models such as those being created by the Open Data Initiative, or more nuanced industry models like Identification of Medicinal Products (IDMP).

Examples of what Grid has on its roadmap:

Product

Identity

Location

Certification

Likewise, there are some common types of transactions that occur in supply chain scenarios. Grid will also provide a reference implementation of scenarios, such as:

Asset transformation / refinement

Asset exchange

Asset tracking

There is also work planned around sample applications that demonstrate how to use these models. And much, much more!

Who’s Involved?

Cargill, Intel and Bitwise IO have been the primary contributors to this initial initiative, but endorsements and/or contributions are in flight from several other organizations. We are excited by the enthusiastic response from like-minded members of the community and look forward to collaborating further.